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Author Topic: Request for simple usability and comfort features  (Read 12840 times)

Hissatsu

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Request for simple usability and comfort features
« on: September 02, 2011, 14:37 »

Greetings.

DoomRL is surely a great masterpiece, but playing it i keep finding frustrating, tiring, annoying or just complicated moments for that a fix is very simple and would, without changing game balance, provide for a much better experience IMHO.

1) Running.
Like it is now, running has basically two modes - stop or not on items, and even that is buried in config.lua (and isn't even close to other run options which makes it even more complicated...)

May i propose numerous run options (like different keys for different run modes) or possibly a run modification (like you can press RUN then direction, or you can press RUN then CAUTIOUS then direction) or toggle (you can press "run mode toggle" to scroll between run modes, and run key does the currently chosen run mode).
- CAREFUL - should stop when encountering enemy OR enemy blip if you have intuition OR door OR item
- NORMAL - stop when encountering enemy OR enemy blip if you have intuition OR door
- CARELESS - only stop when encountering an enemy OR enemy blip if you have intuition

Really, being able to stop when encountering enemy blip with intuition is probably the most important. Also, not requiring to go to config to change if you want to walk over items would be a huge plus, as an option to ignore doors ON DEMAND - you know, like when Jericho went off, and your guy keeps stopping near doors...

2) Being able to continue shooting somewhere you don't see.

DoomRL is A LOT about shooting at something you cannot see. Yet, game penaltises you for that, requiring you to re-aim every shot! Of course sometimes you can shoot at visible tile and bullet will go on and hit, but you cant always rely and sometimes it just wont. In such cases, having an option (config, or ingame key) to continue firing if you didnt move would GREATLY save time and frustration. It really hurts to keep re-aiming at a bruiser brother or an arch pack with a shrapshooter build...

Saves time and removes annoyance!

3) Option to automatically scroll to the end of the message text instead of having to click for more.

Currently there are often situations that require you to read walls of text. It happens for example if in one turn you get shot 10 times and you shoot 10 times... You keep pressing [more] and this is really annoying. Not to mention i think if you play for a fast achivement it is a REAL problem! A simple option to show the last of the messages, and an indication that the message was bigger than the screen, would suffice! It would greatly help in those situations when you KNOW what happened (you saw those 3 A firing at you and you know your TH FS Assault Cannon fires ALOT of bullets and you saw it kill two enemies in a volley). This could be a config option for simplicity.

4) Easy way to determine item or any object ID.

A lot of people have a lot of preferences. Changing color is one of the matter of preferences, and currently, you have to go to a non-existant wiki page (by google caching it) to get the item or enemy id's you want to recolor (and still new packs and stuff isnt there obviously). Game itself should know this very well and could easilly display it on demand. A debug option/cheat/something that would show ID of the thing you look at would greatly help customizing the game experience!

5) "Sticky" fire option

Currently the message about killing yourself takes you out of firing mode. This VERY MUCH helps you get killed when you are repeatedly firing something outside your vision range. You do fire-aim-fire-listen for death-repeat. If you make a slight mistake and press f twice in a row and instead of doing fire - go to aiming mode you do go to firing mode-fire at yourself you will move instead of aiming.
This would be VERY easy to fix - just make it so only escape takes you out of firing mode, attempt at firing on yourself should just show a message and continue aiming.
Also this would be much better than current "require enter when attempting to fire an empty weapon" - instead it could go to firing mode but refuse to fire. This would both solve "moving instead of aiming" problem and remove the need to press enter.

6) Very long item names

Often some modified assembly item would have a too long name. This makes its most important part - stats and mod lists - go off the screen. Obviously, the mod list and current status (ammo/armor) is THE thing that interests you more than "modified" prefix! If there would be an option to align very long item names to the right border of the screen, hiding the prefixes or item name start. Probably even add some "short" versions like M. instead of Modified. Everything, but the item status should be clearly visible on the screen.

Thanks. I hope at least some of my ideas prove useful...
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Kornel Kisielewicz

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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #1 on: September 02, 2011, 15:20 »

Many of those are great ideas, and I'll try to implement them. However, I'd like the community input on most of them.

Thank you for the input!

BTW, as far as running goes, this will be highly configurable in one of the next versions. The running code will be rewritten as a public Lua function, and you'll be able to bind an additional modified one yourself if needed.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2011, 15:21 by Kornel Kisielewicz »
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Kornel Kisielewicz

Hissatsu

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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #2 on: September 03, 2011, 00:13 »

Oh and last:

Waiting!

Currently, waiting allows you to wait only for 1 second. This makes it practically useless further into the game when enemies are faster and you are faster - its better to walk around rather than wait, since alot of endgame enemies can move faster than 1 second. Of course what i propose would make a game "easier" in some way, but i think its reasonable:

Instead of skipping 1 second straight away, waiting should skip 10x0.1 second and check after each interval if a monster is spotted (or player is fired upon, in case monster was not detected and fired on player). Player should still be damaged once if waiting on top of some hazardous tile. Or maybe waiting on top of hazardous tiles should be cancelled immediately (0.1 second) and damage player - you can hardly patiently wait while standing in lava.

This change would really allow the ambush you often need (when going in is a suicide and you have to wait for them to come for you, like in The Wall...). If this is deemed too much of a player advantage, perhaps it could be in intervals equal to 1/2 or 1/4 of player movement speed, but no smaller than 0.1s, and total wait time would be biggest possible that is less than 1 (so if your waiting intevals is 0.3, you will wait 3x0.3 for one key press)

And a purely cosmetic one:

Cursor removal

When i did my ascii games in my childhood, i didnt like how blinking cursor was always there, on the tile i outputted the last. I found a ASM hack that allowed removal of the cursor (if i understand correctly, it pushes the value into the place which holds the cursor size - height in pixels, and putting 0 there hides the cursor). And it worked wonders! I dont know if its possible in windows or linux to implement such, or maybe the cursor is intended, but for me it looks strange that there is an _ blinking under my player for some reason, or under the tile i aim at. Of course cursor should remain for "look" option, but otherwise, i think game would look better without any..
« Last Edit: September 03, 2011, 00:23 by Hissatsu »
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Thomas

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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #3 on: September 03, 2011, 08:24 »

Oh and last:

Waiting!

Currently, waiting allows you to wait only for 1 second. This makes it practically useless further into the game when enemies are faster and you are faster - its better to walk around rather than wait, since alot of endgame enemies can move faster than 1 second. Of course what i propose would make a game "easier" in some way, but i think its reasonable:

Instead of skipping 1 second straight away, waiting should skip 10x0.1 second and check after each interval if a monster is spotted (or player is fired upon, in case monster was not detected and fired on player). Player should still be damaged once if waiting on top of some hazardous tile. Or maybe waiting on top of hazardous tiles should be cancelled immediately (0.1 second) and damage player - you can hardly patiently wait while standing in lava.

This change would really allow the ambush you often need (when going in is a suicide and you have to wait for them to come for you, like in The Wall...). If this is deemed too much of a player advantage, perhaps it could be in intervals equal to 1/2 or 1/4 of player movement speed, but no smaller than 0.1s, and total wait time would be biggest possible that is less than 1 (so if your waiting intevals is 0.3, you will wait 3x0.3 for one key press)

0.1s wait has been suggested before, and it's far too powerful for someone with fast move/fire time, such as a Shottyhead player. As for a 'wait interval', it would make sense to make the player's wait delay the same as their movement delay (if only to stop savvy players from moving side to side instead of waiting for that extra fraction of a second) but any shorter would still be pretty abusable.
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Matt_S

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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #4 on: September 06, 2011, 20:52 »

I definitely support 2 and/or 5.  3 would be pretty nice as well, which usually comes up for me in the Chained Court as every former human shoots at the same time, sometimes killing each other and adding more messages.  Perhaps one could press escape to skip all the text?

I agree that wait time should be based off move speed.
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Chronos

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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #5 on: September 10, 2011, 03:26 »

2) Being able to continue shooting somewhere you don't see.
3) Option to automatically scroll to the end of the message text instead of having to click for more.perience!

5) "Sticky" fire option


I fully share these.

Also, what about adding the weapon's ammunition, type and damage type in the item menu where weapons' stats are displayed?
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drugon

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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #6 on: September 10, 2011, 06:08 »

It would be great to make a special key that can give you list of discovered assemblies. For now it's possible to do only in menu as I know.
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Chronos

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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #7 on: September 10, 2011, 06:14 »

It would be great to make a special key that can give you list of discovered assemblies. For now it's possible to do only in menu as I know.

Have you tried pressing "A"?
It's similar to Trait screen
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drugon

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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #8 on: September 11, 2011, 05:09 »

Oh. Thanks. Didn't know about it. ^_^ In this case - is it possible to make a list of all combinations that you've tried while searching the assemblies? For now I'm writing them down manually.
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Malek Deneith

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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #9 on: September 11, 2011, 05:26 »

4) Easy way to determine item or any object ID.

A lot of people have a lot of preferences. Changing color is one of the matter of preferences, and currently, you have to go to a non-existant wiki page (by google caching it) to get the item or enemy id's you want to recolor (and still new packs and stuff isnt there obviously). Game itself should know this very well and could easilly display it on demand. A debug option/cheat/something that would show ID of the thing you look at would greatly help customizing the game experience!

Open up sound.lua in notepad and look there - exotics, uniques and I think some of the boss mobs are not present there since KK doesn't want them there, but rest of the stuff is bound there, and since binding requires ID it's an easy way to find them ;) (unless KK forgot to include bindings for new stuff... going have to check the file again at some point D:)
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Chronos

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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #10 on: September 11, 2011, 05:37 »

Oh. Thanks. Didn't know about it. ^_^ In this case - is it possible to make a list of all combinations that you've tried while searching the assemblies? For now I'm writing them down manually.

Nope. I didn't try any combination. All my assembly list comes by schematics powerup and the wiki (tactical boots/armor).

EDIT: Sorry, I understood only now.

A list of all attempts sounds to be a very huge list... I'm not agree to add such a list.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2011, 05:42 by Chronos »
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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #11 on: September 13, 2011, 16:23 »

How about something to make mod pack order for assemblies less volatile? Putting the mods in the wrong order on a plasmatic shotgun, for example, and losing ammo regeneration really sucks. Moreover, it's the sort of thing that would be impossible to predict without looking at the wiki; thus, this sort of thing basically encourages players to cheat. And when it requires a unique modpack...yeah not so fun.
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Zecks

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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #12 on: September 14, 2011, 02:23 »

A hopefully simple request: Being able to configure the order of item types in the inventory.

I'm still used to boots being at the bottom and keep equipping ammo packs.
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rekenne

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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #13 on: October 06, 2011, 11:14 »

Totally agree with all of the things in the first post. Would also like to make a suggestion that firing an empty gun forces a more command, too, as I've run out of bullets at a very inopportune time, when I could have just switched guns. Instead I walked out into a Revenant...

As to the wait: Yeah, making it FLOOR(1s, move delay) would make it less abusive, but also make waiting less unintuitively bad.
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rchandra

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Re: Request for simple usability and comfort features
« Reply #14 on: October 06, 2011, 13:26 »

firing when empty forcing a response is in the options file. "EmptyConfirm = true"
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